Missing

We popped into the big Kinokuniya bookshop in KLCC whilst we were in KL last week. The good news is that there's no sign that the place is downsizing, as seems to be happening to the Singapore branch. For the last ten years or so I've had the distinct impression that the KL branch is better run than its Singaporean counterpart. More genuine thought seems to be put into its displays, for example, and you don't see multiple copies of the same title taking up excessive shelf-space.

But I did notice one negative development. The shelves devoted to 'literary texts' seem to be moving down market. One of the signs of this is that contemporary fiction now dominates. Now it isn't that I don't think of texts being worthy unless they've been around for a few decades, but when an upper-end bookstore doesn't have a single novel by Conrad or Balzac or Faulkner on its literary shelves it's time to worry.